Synagogue Rally Protests Ahmadinejad's Speech

September 30, 2009|David A. Schwartz dschwartz@tribune.com

Standing in front of symbolic bags of garbage, about 50 members of Boca Raton Synagogue last Thursday afternoon protested Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech to the United Nations General Assembly the previous evening.

"He spews garbage," said Sara Brudnoy, one of the demonstration's organizers.

In his address to a half-empty U.N. chamber, Ahmadinejad attacked Israel, the United States and the West and made veiled anti-Semitic remarks.

Several delegates walked out when he accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli, U.S. and Canadian delegates were already outside the hall in a boycott of the speech to protest Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denials.

Ahmadinejad made only a passing reference to Iran's nuclear issue in a call for global nuclear disarmament.

He preaches the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews, Freedman said. "What is our answer?" he asked.

"Am Yisroel chai," people in the crowd responded. And they began to sing.

"God is with us and we are with him," Freedman said. "We stand united. We live and we will continue to live. We live to bring to the world peace and not jihad and war."

There were no protests in Miami, Hollywood or Fort Lauderdale, Freedman said. So the West Boca Raton synagogue decided to have a rally to denounce Ahmadinejad.

"We oppose him with every fiber of our being," Boca Raton Synagogue's Rabbi Efram Goldberg said. "We haven't learned from what took place in the past.

"This is an action-oriented congregation," Goldberg said. "We have to show what happened in the Holocaust will not happen again."

"It's almost unbelievable that conditions that existed 70 years ago are happening again. It's hard for that to sink in," said David Brudnoy. "With programs like this, we just are trying to wake people up."

"The world said, 'never again, never again,' but it's happening before our eyes," said Ruth Friedman, an Israeli who has lived in Florida for 30 years and whose daughter made aliyah to Israel earlier this month.

Friedman said she is concerned for both her daughter and the world. "We have to make sure the world sees Ahmadinejad for who he is and how dangerous he is to Israel and the world."